Start lawn from scratch

I just moved into a new house, and the back yard is absolutely awful! Most of the grass is dead, the rest is patchy and coarse, there's blackberry bushes and English ivy, and old gopher holes as well. I want to remove it all and start from scratch. Ultimately, what I want is a flat plane of dirt so I can build a deck, a flower bed, and a new lawn.

I'm just not sure how to achieve this. Do I just throw a layer of dirt on top of what's already there and smooth it out? Do I have to remove the current dead lawn first? Do I just till it all down? The first picture is what the yard looks like now, with most of the blackberries and ivy removed. The second picture is what I want to end up with, basically just a blank canvas. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

The ivy and blackberry bushes will need either really careful digging out and removing of all roots or some short-lived herbicide spot applied. Otherwise they will return. Or if you aren’t in a hurry and it is sunny, put a layer of clear plastic down in the areas with those two plants, sealing the edges, and let the sun, dryness, and heat kill them over the course of a year. This will kill other plants there as well as some of the weed seeds.

Have you dug any holes to see what the soil is like? Clay or sand or construction debris or nice loam because it was a farm field in the past?

Not sure why emmarene said not to till. Perhaps she thought photo 2 was the current status. If the soil is reasonable, after killing weeds, I would add a layer of compost and till it in to remove gopher holes and mix in compost in all areas except where the deck or patio will be. Having the extra organic matter in the soil will help whatever you plant be more resilient. Or alternatively, plant a fall cover crop such as winter rye and till that in next season a few weeks before the best time to plant grass in your area. It can be mowed as a rough lawn for a while.

Generally, the prep of a new seed bed for a lawn involves a grading rake and/or rolling. Both will effectively level out any lumps or bumps that might occur with tilling. Been involved with enough new construction lawn installations to be able state this with a fair degree of assurance :-) And remarks that it takes 3 years for soil to settle after tilling are bunk!! It is just not true and rainfall/irrigation will usually take care of much of it in the first few months....grading and/or rolling just does it faster and more efficiently.

However, tilling is never a requirement. Often times, just a decent layer of soil, compost or better yet, a soil/compost mix spread evenly across the area after all the weed issues have been addressed will suffice.

Depending on location, it is getting a bit late in the season to seed a new lawn and have it properly established before cold weather sets in. And spring seeding is often ill-advised in many parts of the country due to weed proliferation at that time.

That's true, claims of 3 months are kind of bunk. Soil never settles again after tilling, it's eternally bumpy because you just unsettled it and kicked it around...

What we mean is that tilling renders the soil uneven, disturbs the soil profile, injects oxygen into layers where it really isn't intended to go (which accelerates decay of organic material at those layers and damages the distribution of aerobic, less oxygen tolerant, and and so on bacteria and fungi at each soil horizon) and a hundred other things.

It takes time for the soil biology to resettle. The A and B horizons you just mixed never re-settle because they weren't supposed to be mixed in the first place--and stay that way for longer than you're going to be worried about it, up to effectively forever on the human scale. Which can be problematic if the horizons differ vastly and you just dug deep.

And a real problem if you just shipped a bunch of not very decayed organic matter down deeper where it can't get oxygen or nitrogen. Say hello to dying grasses if you aren't lucky and yellow ones if you are.

And since one never digs evenly and tends to go deep on the softer portions and shallower on the harder stuff, you just created an uneven and very bumpy surface that will never settle to your satisfaction. I've never been there, but I've seen others who have, indeed, BTDT.

" If your pH is very low (<5.5, you didn’t mention pH, though) tilling will make your initial application of lime much more effective. "

True, but fortunately, calcium perks. :-) For the four inches or so we're concerned about, it's of no great consequence. Use a nice, small sieve size and skip the tilling. And at very low pH, calcium is so soluble that it'll perk fast.